


muder, mayhem, and hormones

by bettercrazythanboring



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettercrazythanboring/pseuds/bettercrazythanboring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes I dabble in drabbles. (I should update this more.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. for a better future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from the first mg ficathon

**untitled | t | Ike/Casey | _You're so bad but I want a taste._**  
  
"Don't you have anything better to do than strut around and make heads turn?" he asks, chewing on his pen in the library.  
  
"Was  _that_  what I was doing?" She doesn't even bother to look at him. "And here I thought I was studying for my History final."  
  
"Pretend all you want, sweetheart, but we always inevitably end up here. Every day. Together. Alone."  
  
"Among two dozen people," she continues, mimicking his tone as she sits opposite him and cracks open a book. "At study break. In a library. It's  _freaky_  is what it is."  
  
"You want me. Admit it."  
  
"Oh, Ike, I want you! I want you so much!" Her palm flies to her heart. "To shut up because some of us still value education."  
  
He snorts. "Among all the murder and mayhem here? Please, what could you possibly learn that was useful in this place?"  
  
"How to make tear gas, for example," she says. "Oh, wait, don't I know that already? I could've  _sworn_  I had some lying around my room... Oh, well. If I chug a few things out the window while you're taking a piss, you'll understand, right?"  
  
"Only if you understand when some of your underwear inevitably ends up in my possession."  
  
Her face contorts into a grimace. "You  _suck_."  
  
"Yes, and by doing so I've doled out three whole orgasms to unsuspecting and grateful females at this school today. Say, how many have  _you_  had?" He crosses his arms. "Judging from that stick up your ass, I'm gonna say the low side of zero, but, I mean, that's just a guesstimate."  
  
She shakes her head with a disbelieving gasp and puts her hands on the desk. "I'm leaving."  
  
"Oh, come on, aren't you the least bit curious?"  
  
She stops walking away and turns back toward him. "About what?! How many girls you've slept with? Trust me, I don't wanna know."  
  
"I was thinking more along the lines of 'why so many girls have  _allowed me to sleep with them_ ', but, sure, that works, too."  
  
"That's easy," she says. "You used hypnosis."  
  
"Nope." He crosses his arms behind his head and balances on the back legs of his chair. "Two guesses left."  
  
"Really not interested."  
  
"Okay, look, how about this. I'm not using hypnosis now, right?"  
  
She crosses her arms and scowls. "As far as I can tell."  
  
"Well, then, listen to me without snarking for a bit. And if you and I are not passionately making out within five minutes, I will never hit on you again."  
  
"Pfft, good luck." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.  
  
"Oh, I don't need it. I have  _logic_  on my side."  
  
"Sure you do."  
  
\----  
Four minutes later, Casey is ravaging his neck and unbuttoning his pants, and wondering how the hell she got here, in between gasps and making sure they don't topple the bookshelves over and cause a domino crash.  
  
But when he bites her shoulder, it dawns on her that she really doesn't care, as long as she  _stays_  there.

* * *

**a black silhouette | PG | **hisao/guillaume**  |  _how terrible it is to love something death can touch_**

He marvels at his own stupidity.  
  
For days, he keeps the darkness and pain at bay just by wondering how it is that he couldn't tell the love of his life apart from an entirely different person—someone he  _hates_ —for... for far too long. How it is that he looked into those golden eyes dozens of times and heard the black-haired boy breathe at night—such a calming sound— and didn't  _know_.  
  
He remembers watching the guy take his anger out on the boxing bag and running his eyes with a smile over the sweat-slicked body that he'd marked as his such a little while ago, and thinking that _surely_  after he just got the Fukayama boy to listen he'd, get the chance to do it again. And again. And again.  
  
How did he  _not know?_  
  
Guillaume feels dirty and despicable just thinking about it, and he scrubs his skin raw for the third time in a week when the scolding shower water won't do the trick.  
  
He wanders the halls with slumped shoulders and he won't talked to Irina because maybe, if they'd just  _done something differently_ , if they hadn't  _listened to her_ , maybe Hisao would still be alive. Maybe he wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night and hear the breathing he used to know so well, and gain comfort it, and have to remember all over again that he  _doesn't_. He doesn't know it and never has.  
  
For years, he's walked through this school with longing and fury surging up in his chest whenever that handsome face, thick eyebrows, and neatly tufted black hair popped into his view. For years, he's battled the urge to punch its owner in the face until it became an equally unwelcome urge to pull him into his arms for just a moment and pretend that he's someone else, someone who is here. For years, he's wondered if the boy he waited until the last moment to confess to—and even then, disguised it with nonchalance because he was so unaccustomed to feeling things like that—ever thought about him at all.  
  
And now, when, for a blissful fifty-six minutes, he'd thought that maybe happiness was finally in his reach—someday, when all this was over and they could sit back and relax, and Hisao was still by his side—he's stuck walking through this school with his stomach dropping and eyes stinging and mouth snarling whenever he sees that that handsome face, thick eyebrows, and neatly tufted black hair. Now there's no pretending because he can't convince himself even  _for a moment_  that this isn't real, and he can't even beat the guy to a bloody pulp for causing all this to happen in the first place because, as far as Guillaume can tell, Jun feels even worse than he does.  
  
Which is no minor feat.  
  
A feat he wishes were easy as pie to achieve. Just so that he wouldn't want to claw his chest open every day.  
  
There's no grave that he can go to. He doesn't know what the academy did with the bodies. The only memorial, the only  _mention_  of Hisao's death he gets is a brief speech about somebody who isn't him. That's all. A two-minute speech that doesn't even mention him as a person, just a casualty. That's the last page of a book whose entire latter half has been ripped from its spine, preventing anyone from reading further. That's the closure he gets.  
  
His friends are gone, held captive, and the new friends don't trust him, and the only other person who knew Hisao for who he really was doesn't talk to him.  
  
Not that he  _wants_  Jun to talk to him.  
  
They have exactly the same voice.

* * *

**domesticity? what's that? | PG | **ike/jade**  - grocery shopping**

"...and  _that's_  why dick-shaped cucumbers are banned in Europe," he finishes, putting the vegetable in question back on the pile of similarly underappreciated edible phallic objects.  
  
"That's all very interesting and great," Jade says with shake of her head, "but it in no way answers the question I asked."  
  
Ike examines the content label of a bag of chips with pursed lips. "Which was?"  
  
"'How much dip do we need?'"  
  
"Oh." He frowns and puts the bag back. "Well, barring another apocalyptic outbreak of fatal laziness, I'd say we can put two cans back on the shelf and still drown in wasabi."  
  
"Imagine choking on pepper dust," she says with a dreamy look. "Man, what a way to go."  
  
"I still maintain that you could breathe fire if you ate enough spices."  
  
"Or at least make others taste the peppers on your breath," she agrees, taking out the list Casey had given them. "Okay, we still need... uh, toilet paper?"  
  
He nods knowingly. "Ah, the pinnacle of my existence. A quest for dead trees to shit on." He claps a fist to his heart. "I will be brave, my love. Wait for me. And if I don't come back, tell my father—"  
  
"Shut up and fetch the damn things while I try to find baby formula in this maze."  
  
He pouts. "You do know that we could just call shenanigans on Casey and Hunter and make them fetch their own diapers, right?" he points out before leaving.  
  
"Toilet paper," she corrects. "You're fetching  _toilet paper_. Do you want me to write it on your hand?"  
  
"I know very well what kind of slavery those two have sold me into, thank you very much. But if you dare claim that they have never, nor  _will_  they ever wrap their baby in toilet paper, then I will have no choice but to call you either stupid or a liar. I'm just warning you."  
  
"Ike. TP. Go."  
  
" _You can't tell me what to do!_ "  
  
"You volunteered to come along, remember?" she says with a sigh. "And we specifically agreed that I was in charge."  
  
" _He_  would appreciate the reference," Ike mutters. "Wait, I think I fucked that up. Is it... 'don't tell me what I can't do'?"  
  
"Ike."  
  
"I'm going, I'm going."  
  
"Oh, and if it's on the way, diapers are actually on this list, too."  
  
He whips around from twenty paces away. "Are you  _kidding_  me?"  
  
A smile spreads over her lips. "Yes."  
  
"Well, don't. It's weird." He grins and walks off, leaving her to agonize over baby food brands.  
  
Jade stands by the shelf for longer than she'd care to admit and is almost ready to go looking for Ike when her phone rings.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"I forgot one more thing," Casey says, some sort of wailing in the background. "Balloons. We need balloons. Balloons are good, right?"  
  
"Pretty sure the baby doesn't care either way, but okay."  
  
"And, like, disposable cameras. For the guests."  
  
"There's literally gonna be seven of us there, Case."  
  
"Oh. Right."  
  
"Look, as the godmother, I feel it's my duty to tell you that you are being way too nervous for the good of your daughter, so stop worrying and let Ike and me take care of the shower."  
  
"You heard what you just said, right?"  
  
Dammit.  
  
"Yes, and, strangely, I stand by it. We'll be there in twenty. Stop worrying and pick up a carrot or something."  
  
Jade hangs up just in time to see Ike walking down the isle, covered in streaks of colorful, scented paper.  
  
"Ugh, i don't even want to know," she mutters.  
  
And they turn back to a maze of babies and tuna and peas, and debate pizza toppings for five minutes, ignoring the onlooking passerbys when Ike decides he really doesn't mind looking like a badly photoshopped galaxy.  
  
"So, what about dick-shaped  _potatoes_?" Jade asks at the checkout line.

* * *

**can I be bored with you | PG | **Ike/Jade |** coffee shop au**

"Hey, can I get a blueberry muffin, please?"  
  
Her teeth are gnawing on her lip and she notices, once again, that her nail polish is peeling off. Dammit. She can never find the time to reapply it.  
  
"That's it?" he asks with a grimace. "No frappuccino or insanely specific instructions?"  
  
Jade takes a look around the empty cafe with a frown. "N-no...?"  
  
"That sucks. I'm bored." He sighs, wondering how long the machines have to be off for the smell of coffee to leave this place. "Don't you usually get something extravagant anyway? With, like, a morning glory drawn on it?"  
  
"I... do. How did you know that?" she asks, watching as he fetches the muffin.  
  
"Bright hair like that... hard to miss," he says with an easy grin. "I just don't usually work the counter."  
  
"Explains the manners," she mutters with a twist of her eyebrow.  
  
He gasps. "That  _stings_... uh, you."  
  
"Jade," she offers as he rings her up.  
  
"I will have you know,  _Jade_ , that I am one of the finest baristas in the state and manners are simply not in my job description." He cracks open a window.  
  
The cool autumn breeze drifts in and she rubs her hands together and cracks her knuckles, hunching up her shoulders. "Best, huh? Then what are you doing working at a Starbucks on the corner of nowhere?"  
  
He clicks his tongue. "Oh, did I say 'state'? I think I meant 'street'. Honest mistake."  
  
"Okay, then, come on; show off your monumental skills and fix your wounded pride," she urges with a mischievous glint in her eye, glancing behind him at the menu.  
  
"Ah, can you smell the blood leaking from my every orifice?"  
  
She bursts out chortling, hand flying to her mouth. "Gross!"  
  
"I have this thing about metaphors," he explains. "So what'll it be? Please choose something complicated; I'm literally bored out of my mind. See? Waaahgjfjeijf," he finishes with a perfectly straight face.  
  
She stops mid-breath, finger in the air. "Huh?"  
  
"Metaphors," he reminds her. "Out of my mind. Get it?"  
  
No, she does not.  
  
"Uh... sure. Whatever. So, what's the most complicated thing you can do?" She rests her hip against the counter and leans over it to see his work station.  
  
"Sure you've got time for it, Red?"  
  
"I'm bored waaafjjfhudi out of my mind too," she says with her best impression of him. "My meeting doesn't start for another hour and I forgot my favorite book at home."  
  
"Okay, well, Jade, settle in and prepare to have your socks knocked o—"  
  
"Are you gonna ask me to go barefoot?" she teases.  
  
His mouth does this funny thing where it's not a smile, but not exactly annoyed either, and his tongue is stuck between her teeth. It's  _adorable_.  
  
"I was, yes. Glad you offered first."  
  
"Oh, I did not. And anyway, you do realize we're talking about  _coffee_ , right? Not much to be amazed at there."  
  
He leans in conspiratorially. "Shh. My boss will hear you."

* * *

**i'm only useless until i'm needed | t | **ian/akiko**  |  _i will crush, i will maul, i will burn until i get to you_**

For days, he doesn't move from his bunk bed. Just thinking.

One the second night, Fortunato gives up on trying to bring him food. He gives up on trying to coax a single word out of his friend. He gives up on wondering if Ian is cold or if his muscles are capable of moving from sitting in a lotus position for so long.He gives up on treating him as a person rather than an object.

But he won't call for help. Never that.

The wind blows through the open window on the fourth night, the sill illuminated by the vague glint of moonlight outside. When the silver touches Ian's thumb, he moves his hand, grabs the headboard, and jumps off the bed in one quick motion. The halls are dark and quiet as he sneaks through them, still dressed in his blood-soaked Woodrun clothes, and he uses his knowledge of the school's surveillance to slip through the blind spots, entirely unnoticed.

The first guard he encounters is taken out with two tranq darts to the neck. The second with a blow to the head via a janitor's broom. The third... well, Ian can no longer say he's never set fire to rain.

He's sweaty and fidgety by the time he finally makes it to the hospital wing, but he keeps going. Nine is in her office and he briefly toys with the idea of breaking her neck—just because—but that's not what he's here for.

No, what he's here for is in room 813, behind two sets of curtains and covered in the thick scent of bleach.

He covers his nose with his sleeve and pulls back the curtains, and what he sees makes his knees drop.

"No..." he whispers, arms sagging to his sides. "Akiko... Akiko?"

She lays there, perfectly still and pale, and with blood leaking from her open wounds.

"Akiko!" he screams and jumps up, searching for her breath and her pulse, and any signs of life.

This isn't what he was prepared for. Didn't he give the Academy enough time to cure her? It's been nearly a week, for fuck's sake. He's seen David's victims act like nothing's happened within two days. "Best treatment we can give her," his ass.

"Akiko," he croons, hugging her. "Akiko..."

At least she's alive, he thinks with a single tear rolling down his cheek and into her hair. But despite the terror he'd felt when Fortunato carried her out of that sodden place, this is an image he'll never forget. Her hair is stiff and the circles below her eyes are black—no, not the grayish violet people usually call that, but actual pitch black—and he can see every vein in her arm, and no matter how many times he presses a handkerchief to her forehead, the blood never stops leaking.

What does he do now? Now that breaking her out would do more harm than good? Now that he can see no way to help? Now that he isn't sure she'll ever get better, under  _anyone's_  care?

How does he go on?

.....

He sneaks back into his room, breaks a few legs on the way, punches Fortunato in the nose, and cries himself to sleep, praying for the first time in his life.

* * *

**the puzzle piece carelessly thrown into the wrong box | PG | **hunter**  |  _i have only two emotions: careful fear and dead devotion_**

He never tried to take back the things fate robbed him of.

One by one, the few boys and girls he used to call his friends scattered into the dark, hollow abyss called life. They went on with their existences—happy or otherwise, but always  _vivid_ —and moved on, and never looked back once he made it clear he had no intention of looking forward.

As months went by, it became apparent that the stories he'd sought solace in all his life no longer had any effect on him.

They were ingrained deep into who he was, yes, and, to the casual observer, his obsession with fiction wouldn't appear to lessen one bit—with all the quotes and the jokes and the references—but the passion that got him into them in the first place was... gone. And so, a few issues and DVDs at a time, Hunter gave away all his collections to his little step-brother.

Maybe Andy would have better use for them than sitting in an empty room, staring at one of the most brilliant plot lines ever conceived, and feeling  _nothing_.

He made peace with the clocks in his room and around his house, and on his wrist. So what if they rarely graced him with any other sight than the one two digits away from resembling something out of _Lost_? There was nowhere to rush. Not anymore.

He'd  _slept through his mother's death_. Being on time for anything ever again would be a mockery of her, as far as he was concerned.

The only thing he had to look forward to was enrolling into Morning Glories Academy. Mom said he'd do great things. He'll do them. For her.

And now here he is. Staring into the mouth of an institution that is vast and serious, and home to geniuses... and now him.

The halls are big and light and intimidating, and with every step he takes, he feels less and less like he belongs there. The faculty is talking deep stuff about philosophy and purposes and, when the image of a goat being slaughtered flashes before his eyes, a cold chill runs through him.

There's nothing wrong with the school, of course. It's a perfectly fine well-oiled machine for kids who rejected MENSA because it didn't prove enough of a stimulation; he's just not one of them.

Even the clocks say 4:50. That's a sure sign something's wrong.

One guy in his group is disgusting. Another girl is a judgmental, well, bitch. And by the time the presentation ends, Hunter's just about ready to bolt out the door, Mom be damned, and refund everything he owns just so that he wouldn't have to witness the proof that his acceptance letter was a mistake, that he was never meant to be here.

But then, on impulse, he says hi to this other guy—a quiet, stoic type, he guesses—and he seems friendly. Very friendly. Or what passes for that in his protective wolf sort of way. Hunter's assuming.

He's still a little uneasy, but, hey, at least there's one friend. Sort of. In the making. Who doesn't immediately seem to be an obvious future Nobel Prize Winner. (Although Hunter's not actually sure what such a person would look like.)

That counts for something, right?

And then he bumps into a mass of pure, golden light and easy smiles, and a voice that sweeps all the worry out of his mind to make way for velvet and honey, and he suddenly realizes what future Nobel Prize Winners look like. Or should look like, maybe.

Yet it's not so much what she looks like or what she sounds like, but the things she says. How many times has he looked at his life through a fiction lens? How many times he's been angry at the universe because his existence makes no sense from a narrative perspective? How many times have people told him to, for the love of God, shut the fuck up?

He thought the same thing the moment he realized he cracked heads with a pretty girl. The most cliched moment in romantic comedy history. That's the first thought anyone would have, he thinks, but he's never actually witnessed anyone but him having it. 

The boy could've easily let cliched moments be cliched moments. The world is filled with smart, pretty girls who are out of his league and have nothing in common with him, isn't it? But the moment she comments on the thoughts he's never heard anyone else say out loud, that's when something snaps and Hunter decides, right then and there, that he has no desire to leave this place.

Not as long as she's here.

* * *

**hot is a matter of perception | t | **any**  |  _“the drunk dial. classic. so much tension, so much to implication, so much of what the young kids are calling BCI – that’s booty call implication”_**

He's in the middle of plotting his father's second murder when the phone rings.

"Hello?" he says to the unknown caller, casually flipping through a book which describes, in great detail, the process of bomb-making with limited supplies.

"Hey,  _baby_ , wanna come oooover?" a lazy voice on the other end says.

It's sharp and shrill, and makes him frown. "That depends. Who is asking?"

"Hahhaahhaaha, that's  _funny_ , sweetie. You know who I am," she croons. "I love you and you love me, and we're gonna live happily ever after and  _I'll kill everyone who gets in the way!!!_ "

"No, seriously," he says, " _who_  is this?"

The voice on the other end gasps and he'll bet his suite that she's pouting. "You're being mean. Apologize. Or I'll cut your  _lips off!_ "

She sounds so cheery, like she's smiling, and that's what does it for him.

He leans back into his chair and stretches one arm with a scowl. "Are you the girl who tried to bite my dick last week?"

"Ah!" She giggles, voice like out-of-tune violins. "Wasn't that funnnn?"

"Yeah, I have nothing to say to you."

"Awww, go on and pretend that wasn't the hottest thing you've ever had done to you."

He crosses his legs protectively with a grimace. "It really wasn't."

"Hey!. It was fun. And  _so_  hot." She licks her lips with a pop very obviously. "Wanna bite  _me_  tonight?"

He rests one palm on his forehead and closes his eyes.

"There are  _a lot_  of things I will do for a blowjob, you see. Murder? Sure. Listening to Jade whine about her mom for an hour? You betcha. I will  _even_  consider watching  _The Notebook_  for the promise of at least three. But going within a ten feet radius of  _you_  is where I draw the line."

Silence on the other end.

"Goodbye, psycho. May your life consist of eternal period cramps."

\-----

"Pamela, who were you talking to?"

Her mouth is set, eyes sending daggers at her phone. "Ikey-Wikey is  _dead_  to me."

And, come the next opportunity, he will be dead to everyone else as well.


	2. siesta's over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was another ficathon and i wrote more things. and then was really lazy about putting them on here; this is... what, like, six weeks late?

**what a useless word 'subtle' is | pg-13 | jade/ike | _valentine's day_**  
  
Her face is priceless when you turn up to fifth period Lit. with a bouquet of roses and orchids the size of Hunter's nose. It scrunches up in mortification and aghast amazement and almost makes you forget you had to stumble up three flights of stairs to get it here. You squeeze between the teenagers. Push them down when necessary.  
  
Finally, the desk whines under the weight of all that perfumed fire hazard, and you dust off your hands for a job well done as she gapes, open-mouthed.  
  
"The....  _fuck_ , dipshit?" Jade demands a full minute later, craning her head around the monstrosity to see yours.  
  
"I come in search of thee, my fair maiden," you say, gesturing broadly, "bearing this  _exquisite_  batch of chocolates—"  
  
Your fingers grasp at the air behind you. You frown. There's nothing there.  
  
"I was promised chocolates," you mutter, somewhat offended. The entire classroom stares. " _Hunter!_ " you yell out into the hall and Jade flinches. "Where are my chocolates?"  
  
"Right here,  _unf_ —" A voice comes from the hall. "Jesus, these are heavy. Did you stack them with rocks?" The redhead boy asks, hidden behind a pile of auburn boxes.  
  
You snap a finger toward the desk. "I believe that's 'thanks, Ike, for not letting my biceps deteriorate into oblivion' to you, boy."  
  
"Such a good friend," Hunter mutters. "What would I do without this guy, eh?"  
  
You swear you see him mouth 'run while you can' to Jade before he departs.  
  
"So where was I?" you ask, arranging the ornate boxes in a perfect semi-circle.   
  
Jade snaps out of the hypnosis the care with which your fingers move has put her in and leans back into her chair with crossed arms and even more crossed legs. "About to tell me the meaning of all this, I assume."  
  
"Oh, right." You clap your hands. "Sorry, angel, I  _tried_  to buy a white purebred horse, but—get this—they don't ship to pocket dimensions! Can you believe the  _nerve_?"  
  
Your outraged gesturing may have caught someone's face on the way, but you don't even grant them a glance.  
  
Her eyes narrow. "You're insane."  
  
"Couldn't find any knight-ish armor either. And the ones I stumbled onto were full of human remains," you add, "so this will have to do." You get down on one knee and stick out a hand with an anatomically correct carving of a glass heart in it. "Jade Carlotta Ellsworth—"  
  
"—that's not my middle name—"  
  
"—my sweet, my dear, light of my life,  _fire of my loins_ —"  
  
"—gross,  _perv_ —"  
  
"—will you do me the greatest honor since Zuko was granted permission to return to the Fire Nation and become my Valentine?"

"This school is just tempting fate," Jade whispers to herself. "All the hormonal murderers living here and they don't even  _consider_  the outbreak of another massacre." She shakes her head as her eyes run over the humongous pile of flowers once more. "This is payback, isn't it?"  
  
"Very much so." You put on your widest smirk and ignore the ache in your arms. "How's it working?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm never bringing up tuxes within a mile radius of you, rest assured." She eyerolls and grabs the heart with a resigned pout, testing the weight of it. You wait to see if she'll smash it against the ground. "Or ever asking how you got a hold of this stuff. Seriously, what the hell."  
  
She takes the flower pot, waltzes over to the wall, and dumps it down the open window unceremoniously.  
  
"That hurts," you say. "I spent fifteen whole seconds on the phone with the florist."  
  
"Cry me a river."  
  
"He  _died_  for your betrayal, my love!" You clutch a hand to your heart.  
  
The girl settles back into her seat. "If he was stupid enough to go to the greenhouse, then that's on him, not me. Okay, show's over!" she tells the rest of the class. "Go back to... loitering." She picks at her nails, ignoring you.  
  
But grabs the closest box to her before you can pull it away.  
  
"If I'm gonna spend Valentine's Day hauled up in my room, I'm gonna need a snack," she defends immediately.  
  
"Who said anything about a lonely night?" You reach into your back pocket and pull out dance tickets. "We're going, Red, and I'm going to reenact every lousy romantic movie cliche I can think of, got it?" You wag a finger, then add, before she can protest, "But... I'll wear the damn tux. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."  
  
She runs a tongue over her teeth and deliberately uncrosses her ankles. And snatches one of the tickets out of your fingers so fast you couldn't even blink.  
  
\-------  
  
Later, your mouth dries when she shows up in a strapless number that doesn't leave much to the imagination. (Too much. You want to abandon the whole deal and get her to yank you through her door, but you already spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how bow ties work.) You take her hand and make sure to adorn it with the most obnoxious corsage you could have the kid from Biology class whip up, as if that somehow evens out the tingle sparking through you when she intertwines her fingers with your own.  
  
You tell yourself you're just honoring the bet made with Mark what's-his-face back in second grade that you'd always have a date in the middle of February. Even as you spin Jade around in the scattered light of a disco ball and lay your lips on her childish smile, you believe it.  
  
It's only when a bullet shoots straight through her stomach and blood spreads beneath your hands, still gripping her waist from the slow song you talked her into, and you launch your body in front of hers to protect from the panicked flocks of students, that you feel your insides all turn to ash. So slow. And blow away as you collapse, so cold.  
  
Only as she falls limp in your arms—staining your cursed outfit, yet pushing all thoughts of dry-cleaning out of your mind—and you pray,  _pray_  to a god you never wanted to believe in that this is one of those tricks of hers, one of those impractical cab rides to Futureland, do you truly realize you never knew what it was like.  
  
 _To be alone on a Valentine's day._

* * *

 **with great power comes a great amount of puking | pg | hunter | _time in dreams is frozen. you can never get away from where you've been._**  
  
You gasp awake, fingers trembling and shirt clinging uncomfortably to your chest.  
  
Your nails dig into your palms and only when Jun—ever the insomniac—lets out an annoyed grunt do you realize your pants verge on bloodcurdling screams. Bit by bit, you will your heart to be steady, and, when the room no longer shows up with splotches of black in your vision, check the bowl next to your head.  
  
Empty.  
  
You fall back into the shapeless pillow, wipe your clammy forehead with the corner of a blanket rough enough to scrape the skin right off of you, and wait for the nausea to come. One... two... three... deep breath. One... two... three... is your head heavier than it should be? One... two... oh, thank god.  
  
The queasiness never shows up. You sit up, careful not to jostle anything in the vicinity of a stomach, and remove your damp shirt as you wait. One, two... No, you're not going to throw up tonight.  
  
 _Andre's alive_. No vomiting, you command yourself. He's alive and he's going to  _stay_  that way if you have any say in it. Which you are reasonably certain you do. Why else would all this madness be happening?  
  
Your head hangs as you try to come to terms with the fact that your subconscious would want to kill him. Honestly, it's not like Hodge discovering their secret sleep meetings isn't on the top ten worst fears of everyone in the club. Right up there with parents being killed and the Academy owning a life-size Death Star model without that one fundamental flaw.  
  
Hey, if there's Plato's caves and towers of freakin' Babel here, then  _anything's_  possible.  
  
Maybe the image of her tearing out your friends' intestines has just been on your mind too much, period. You sigh and roll over.  
  
Right over the edge of your bed.

Your shin catches on one some metal bulge or other and leaves a trail of red on the carpet below as you nearly dislocate your shoulder trying to hold onto the post next to your pillow. You let go and fall to the ground, and after catching the sight of exposed muscle on your leg, finally do throw up.  
  
At least it's not Andre's sub-skin things that caused it, you reason.  
  
"Eugh, boy, I thought we talked about this," Ike groans out with sleepily raised eyebrows. "If you're gonna be throwing up every night, keep it to your part of the room and ventilate accordingly. Do I  _need_ to know what you had for dinner all the time?" He raises a palm. "I get my own appeal and understand how craving my positive attention might cause you to take drastic measures, but, just food for thought— _it's not working_."  
  
The boy swiftly turns his back, eager to fall asleep once more, and you briefly consider tucking him in. With the rug you just unloaded on.  
  
But your leg needs attention and you slowly make your way through the halls instead. An uneasiness crawls up your lower back, all the way to your neck, at the dreary night. It's the kind of darkness nothing gets through. Not even moonlight. A faint clicking noise reaches the hall you're in and you begin running despite your leg, torn between taking a shortcut to the nurse's office—where hopefully the actual nurse would be asleep and you could steal some supplies—and turning back, toward Casey. She'd know what to do even without the supplies, right?  
  
"Hey," someone says behind you. You nearly crash to the floor.  
  
You glance up, paralyzed beyond belief. "Hannah," you sigh the name out as a prayer.  
  
"Where're you dashing?" she asks. "You need to work on your sprinting if even I can outrun you, slowpoke." She nudges your ankle.  
  
"Wait, weren't you waiting by the corne—?"  
  
A pair of steel tongs shake you until you're awake. You blink, swatting them instinctively until they turn out to be Guillaume's arms.  
  
" _Finally_ ," he mutters with the faintest trace of superiority. "Were you planning on sleeping the entire day, Hunter?"  
  
The next thing you do is empty the contents on your stomach into the bowl you've had to wash every night this week, and check your shin for injuries.  
  
There are none, but your fingers come back bloody anyway.  
  
"No," you croak out. "Just a tight sleeper, I guess."  
  
"A  _dead_ sleeper," Ike adds from across the room. You shrug and pretend to ignore the questioning grimace Hannah gives you in third period Sumerian History. The chances she'd want you both to take naps in class are simply too high for you to acknowledge her and  _still_  not be known as the kid with the perpetual flu by the end of the day.


End file.
